Silicon Valley Prepares to Make Peace with Trump

From left to right: Left, by Astrid Stawiarz, Drew Angerer, Ramin Talaie, all from Getty Images.

After months spent clashing with Donald Trump on the campaign trail, Silicon Valley’s top dignitaries will fly to New York on Wednesday for a summit of sorts with the tech-adverse president-elect. While the exact agenda of the meeting hasn’t been made public, Alphabet C.E.O. Larry Page, Facebook C.O.O. Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella, IBM C.E.O. Ginni Rometty, and Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook will be among the teach leaders to sit down with the incoming president, his chief of staff Reince Priebus, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to discuss an agenda that is expected to touch on several issues of importance to the industry.

Like the meeting Trump convened last month with media executives, only to berate them for their “biased” coverage, Wednesday’s tech summit could get heated. While the vast majority of Silicon Valley leaders opposed Trump or even fund-raised for Hillary Clinton, some have already clashed personally with the billionaire real-estate developer. Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos, who is reported to be attending, joked that he’d like to send Trump into space on one of his Blue Origin rockets. Trump accused Bezos, without joking, of using The Washington Post as a partisan cudgel and a means of advancing his own business interests. For others, getting along with Trump is even more complicated. Elon Musk, who may or may not attend the summit, currently benefits from both a NASA contract with his company SpaceX, and from alternative-energy subsidies that help consumers purchase cars from his other major company, Tesla Motors. Trump himself has maintained a mostly antagonistic relationship with the tech sector. While he is a huge fan of Twitter, the president-elect has called for the United States to “take back the Internet” from ISIS; called for Bill Gates to “close up” the Web; and said he’ll get Apple to “start building their damn computers and things” in the U.S. He is expected to dismantle Net Neutrality when he takes office next year.

And yet, despite all their differences, it is in Silicon Valley’s interest to make nice with the incoming administration. The first order of business for many tech leaders will likely be to try to soften the president-elect on the topic of immigration reform, which directly affects tech companies. The vast majority of the Valley is actively opposed to a freeze or reform of the H-1B visa laws, which allow foreign students to stay and work in the U.S. after graduating from college. Earlier this year, Facebook C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg and others in the tech community signed onto a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in favor of President Barack Obama’s executive actions, arguing that allowing the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country to contribute to the U.S. economy would benefit the tech industry and the country. “As I travel around the world, I see many nations turning inwards. I hear growing voices for building walls and distancing people labeled as ‘other,’” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post earlier this year. “Whether it’s refugees, undocumented immigrants, or under-represented minorities, I hope we have the wisdom to understand that the best path forward is always to bring people together, not divide them.” The visa program appears to be a point of contention for Trump: in March, Trump said he would “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”

The possibility of stricter immigration laws has already triggered fears of a brain drain, with China and Canada making overtures to foreign engineers to abandon the U.S. for greener pastures in Beijing and Toronto. “I read that an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump complained that three-quarters of engineers in Silicon Valley aren’t Americans,” Baidu C.E.O. Robin Lisaid in a recent address. “So I myself hope that many of these engineers will come to China to work for us.”

Issues of international trade are also sure to be discussed. Trump has been a vocal opponent of what he has eloquently termed “bad” trade deals that he says hurt American workers. He’s repeatedly threatened to impose high tariffs on foreign-made products from places like Mexico and China—a policy that could substantially raise prices for tech products like computers and smartphones. He will likely try to renegotiate some of the North American Free Trade Agreement and has already said he will not implement the President Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, all of which stands to affect tech companies with global supply chains.

The tech industry may have even less luck when it comes to encryption, which Trump opposed throughout his campaign as a potential threat to law enforcement. Earlier this year, Trump denounced Apple for refusing a court order to cooperate with an F.B.I. request to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack last year. “To think that Apple won’t allow us to get into her cell phone? Who do they think they are?” he fumed on Fox and Friends. Trump’s C.I.A. pick, Mike Pompeo, is also no fan of encryption; the Kansas Republican opposed Apple’s refusal to cooperate with the F.B.I. during its investigation of the San Bernardino shooting, calling it “disappointing” and adding that C.E.O. Cook “should not stand in the way of the F.B.I.’s investigation into a dead ISIS terrorist, who has the blood of 14 innocent Americans on his hands.” That may not bode well for other tech companies, like Facebook, that are moving to provide end-to-end encryption on their messaging services.

The California and New York delegations could find much to agree on, however, when it comes to business regulations, which many tech companies would be happy to see lifted. For companies like Uber and Airbnb—neither of which will be represented at the summit, as their respective C.E.O.s can’t make it—Trump’s nomination of Elaine Chao to lead the transportation department could be good news. Aside from helping to rebuild U.S. infrastructure, Chao will be tasked with helping to navigate the future of autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads and the use of drones, both emerging businesses that have major regulatory obstacles to overcome before they become viable. The pro-business, anti-regulation president-elect has been hostile toward some mega-mergers, like the one proposed between AT&T and Time Warner, and has at times attacked companies like Amazon as monopolies. But he has also appeared amenable to business leaders who make a point of flattering him. Time Warner C.E.O. Jeff Bewkes, who previously donated to Democrats, recently made a point of disparaging them as a “threat to the First Amendment.” Experts believe Trump’s F.C.C. is likely to approve the deal.